How Javon Kinlaw balances USC duties and draft buzz, as told by a former NFL coach
John Scott Jr. had plenty to say, but he could have stopped after the question prompted a wide grin to come across his face.
The expression was enough to summarize one coach’s love for his player.
Q: You get Javon on the field now — you didn’t have him in the spring — what’s it like to have him?
A: It makes you smile as a coach.
Scott Jr. is close to entering his first season as South Carolina’s defensive line coach. Though he’s been with the Gamecocks since January, the Greer native has barely seen one of his top players in action.
Javon Kinlaw in 2018 was USC’s only starting defensive linemen to not miss a game because of injury. That constant presence led to 38 tackles and a team-best 4.5 sacks. But such production was missed in the Belk Bowl when the Gamecocks lost by 28 points to Virginia and Kinlaw watched from afar after hip surgery.
Kinlaw was held out for spring ball and had only practiced for Scott Jr. on four occasions by the time Scott Jr. met the media Monday morning in the Long Family Football Operations Center.
The relationship is new, but the admiration is genuine.
“It makes you smile as a coach, just a guy that big,” Scott Jr. said of the 6-foot-6, 310-pound Kinlaw. “And Javon is physical, he’s a tough-minded guy. I like the way he practices, he practices hard. He came into camp in shape, so he’s moving around well. It’s a pleasure when you have a guy that can be disruptive like that and play the way you want him to play.”
Kinlaw, who has yet to be made available to the media this preseason, put the NFL on hold in December when he announced he’d be back for his senior season. He’s now a projected first round pick in the 2020 draft.
“I don’t know if that’s what motivates Javon,” Scott Jr. said of the NFL. “I know one of the things that Coach (Will) Muschamp’s message has been and my message in my room in preseason camp … ‘Be where your feet are. So your feet right now are at the University of South Carolina, let’s have a great senior year. Because if you have a great senior year and we do great things here, all that other stuff will happen. It’ll come like it’s supposed to.’
“So I don’t know if he’s focused on that, I think he’s focused on doing something they haven’t done here in a long time and being an extremely dominant guy for this football team in this conference. So I think that’s more where his goals are this year, which are the right goals to have.”
South Carolina hasn’t had a D-lineman make first-team All-SEC since Jadeveon Clowney in 2013. Clowney’s also the last Gamecock D-lineman to be a first round pick.
Scott Jr., who spent two seasons on the New York Jets staff, said Kinlaw is built as an NFL player right now.
“There’s not many 6-6, 300-plus-pound guys that have his athleticism,” Scott Jr. said, “and he’s really strong and he’s got something that only God can give you — extremely long arms. So he can separate off blockers with quick-twitch.
“If you had to draw up the body type for that league, that’s the body type. In my time with the Jets, we had (former first round pick) Leonard Williams — 6-6, 310-pound guy with that type of athleticism. I mean, those are the type of body types that you draw up.”
